Preserving Strawberry: An ecological balancing act

There's a certain attachment fishermen have with Strawberry Reservoir that goes much deeper than any hook, line and sinker can reach.

Fishermen will spend more than a million hours casting flies and lures and trolling worms and popgear on Strawberry this year. It is, by far, Utah's No. 1 fishing hole and receives more than four times the pressure as the second-most-popular spot.

Anglers come to Strawberry to enjoy all the things fishing offers, such as talking and laughing, enjoying the quiet solitude and natural beauty and trying, with mixed success, to outsmart the fish.

And, for some unknown reasons, those who do catch fish also like to keep them. On average, anglers will keep twice as many fish when they leave Strawberry as they would on any other fishing water in Utah. And, too often, it's the larger fish they keep.

The problem is the large cutthroats in the reservoir are an integral part of a long-range management program. Without them the reservoir could be in jeopardy.

Roger Wilson, project leader at Strawberry for the past 13 years for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, spent nearly two years developing the new regulations to protect the fishery, which went into place in 2003.

Under the new law, the limit is four trout or kokanee salmon in aggregate, but only two can be cutthroat under 15 inches and no more than one can be a cutt over 22 inches. Under the old law, a cutthroat between 15 and 22 inches could be kept.

"We know we're asking a lot of fishermen to release a 22-inch fish, but if we want to have a quality fishery in the future, it has to be done," he explained. "Some people thought we should leave things the way they were. Others thought we didn't go far enough."

Wilson also pointed out that while regulations target cutthroat, the survival of the rainbow is dependent on raising larger cutts.

The main threat to the reservoir comes from the Utah chub. Chubs and rainbow live in the same areas of the reservoir and eat the same foods. Chubs, however, are better survivors than rainbow. A rise in the number of chubs lowers the number of rainbow the reservoir can hold.

Wilson said that there were rainbow caught in gill nets back in 1988, prior to the last treatment in 1990, that were starving to death because chubs were eating all of the food. In surveys prior to 1990, it was reported that for every 100 fish netted, 95 were chubs and 5 were trout.